There was taping facilities in the Oval office, which predated Nixon by a mile and he simply taped ( stupidly and should have destroyed those tapes! )lots of people for historical reasons. JFK and LBJ did the same thing! But they were DEMS, they had already made the moron JFK into a "saint", so even discussing all; of that was never going to happen and by now, has been sent down the memory hole and destroyed...except for those who lived through ALL of this and KNOW what's what.
I stretched a point to make a point.
Think about it.
The less guilty Nixon was, the more ridiculous the comparison.
Political battles are not won by scholarly dissertations with endless footnotes and references. They are won with short powerful statements.
MEGA is the example of our time.
FDR, Reagan, JFK and even obummer understood that most people quit listening after the second sentence.